"I've Fallen For Someone I Work With...But He's Married"

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Yeah. And I'm feeling very excited about this episode.

It's just the kind of subject that is sure to create some very heated and emotional comments from people because it is by nature a minefield. And the subject that we are covering today came from an email that was sent in podcastthewhassey.com for anyone who wants to send us an email. But this email came in and we kind of couldn't help but read it and tackle it head on, even though we know this is going to be a divisive topic. But it, it felt important because it's real life, 100%.

That's why I'm excited. I'm excited because so many people end up in this situation.

So we're going to read out that email and we are going to invite you into this journey of unpacking it and try to provide some advice for anyone else who is facing the same situation. All right, let's begin the show.

So this email is from somebody we will call Jenny. Jenny says hello. Lovely people. Wow. I can't believe I'm writing to you. After all these years of listening. I feel as though I know you all, although you don't know me. Huge congratulations on the wedding, by the way. I have really debated over sending this message as it's a situation I feel a lot of shame over. I hope you can trust that I am trying to navigate this situation with as much care and understanding as possible. I have fallen for a colleague over the past year. It was very unexpected and unplanned. We have worked closely together and just slowly have gotten to know each other on a deeper and deeper level. He is not my type cliche and is not somebody that I would previously have ever considered in that way. But wow. He has loved me in a way that I have never been loved before. I have never felt so seen respected and supported. He is so kind and so sweet. I have felt safe to impose standards and boundaries and feel I can voice my true feelings without worrying he will run away in brackets. I think I'm anxiously attached. I have never argued with somebody in such a positive way. If any issues ever occur and we have the best time together just talking about anything from our deepest feelings to chatting rubbish for hours and hours, I believe he brings out my best self and gives me the space to be completely authentically myself. From what he tells me, he has never felt so accepted and safe to just to be himself as he does with me. The catch? You guessed it, he's married and he has a young child. He says they are miserable. He has moved out at times, divorce papers have been sent to him. The list goes on. But he says he's terrified that she will make his life really difficult to see his daughter, who of course he absolutely adores. If they separate, he seems completely conflicted on what to do. So the question I have is what should I do? I am so angry with myself for falling for this man that is unavailable and yet I'm finding it incredibly difficult to walk away from. Should I be giving him an ultimatum? I understand how difficult of a position he is in. However, where does this leave me? He continues to ask to spend time with me outside of work, which we were doing previously, but I now resist and say no to. Despite it being all I would love to do, I know that it will only make me feel even closer to him. I hope that you do not deem me a bad person this is not a position I would ever have imagined myself in. I have just found myself caring more and more for him, and the more we have gotten to know each other. And I strongly believe that this is mutual. Am I crazy to feel that he married the wrong person? I would so, so appreciate any guidance or advice that you have on this. P S. Thank you for everything you have done for me. All the books, podcasts, and conversations I have listened to over the years have had more impact than you will ever know. So obviously, I want to invite everybody listening who's going to have very strong gut feelings and reactions about this to. To kind of look at it, I think, with as much of an open mind as possible while we talk about it, because I think that, you know, it's actually very brave for Jenny to reach out and tell her story.

Yeah, I. I think it's really important. Anyone who's ever done therapy knows that there is a moment where you feel that there may be huge benefit in speaking something out loud and having the conversation, but you're terrified of the judgment. Yeah, that will come even. Even sitting in front of a therapist, you. You don't want that person, who maybe you respect or like to think differently of you. You don't want it to, you know, tarnish your image. And you're afraid that by speaking it, you know, you're revealing that you're somehow a bad person. And I think it requires incredible bravery to actually say something out loud in the way that this person has done and say, look, this is. These are the facts, and I'm not proud of it, but this is it. I need help.

Yeah, I agree. And so obviously, there's other people who will be listening who have been on the receiving end of that and who have been, you know, the person who. Whose husband or wife have had an affair. So it's complicated. It's a very complicated and divisive subject. But the way we're going to break it down is we are going to talk about why people end up in these situations, because, let's face it, no one grows up going, what I really want in my life is to end up being somebody's mistress. That just doesn't happen. I don't think that's anyone's life goal. So we're going to talk about how people end up in these situations. Then we're going to talk about why do people on the other side do it? So, you know, why do the married people kind of end up in these situations themselves? And then also we're going to Talk about what happens inside those dynamics, because I think this is very, very important to uncovering a little bit of clarity for Jenny herself. And then we'll end on, you know, some advice on what we think is the best way for her to move forward out of that situation. So let's get to it. I'm really curious, Matthew, why do people end up in these situations?

If you take someone who really wants to find love, maybe has found that it's a lot harder than they ever thought it would be, hasn't met someone in a long time that they feel really attracted to, even if they have maybe hasn't felt any mutual attraction of that kind anytime recently. And a lot of people, let's be honest, are not either proactive or struggle to create opportunity outside of their regular life. They're probably seeing friends on weekends. They get to the end of a long day at work, and they want to go home and watch an episode of their favorite show and eat dinner and go to bed before doing it all over again. Now, I think our love lives are this really challenging place where we want something really, really badly. We want to find love for most people. And you talk about this a lot. It's their number one life goal, especially at the point of their life that they come to us for coaching. It is their number one goal. And yet it feels like there's very little time for that goal. And maybe even more than there's very little time for that goal, there's very little energy left at the end of the day to serve that goal. And with what energy they do have to get proactive. The results for a lot of people feel immensely disappointing and meeting, you know, weirdos on apps or if it's not a weirdo, it's someone who is just out for a good time and doesn't want the same things that I want or isn't attracted to me, that sets the stage for someone to be in this case. But I think this is extremely common in the workplace where they spend three quarters of their life. And to have day after day interacting with someone, there's no urgency in a situation like that. Right? It's much more. In some ways, it's more challenging for an affair to start in a coffee shop because it's like you have to be very conscious if you're him in this scenario and you're unhappy in your marriage or you're looking for something else, or you're just someone who wants an affair. You have to be very conscious of, I am going to go up to someone Speak to them, exchange numbers with.

Them, lie to them in a lot of cases, because most people would be like, I don't. I don't want your freaking number. You're married, right? Get away from me.

So that. That has to be a very conscious moment. But at work, there's something else that happens. There's no urgency. There's just two people sharing the same bit of carpet who are gradually getting closer. There are some things that she says that I find really interesting. She says it was very unexpected and unplanned. We have worked closely together and just slowly gotten to know each other on a deeper and deeper level. And that's how it happens, right, in these situations, is that slowly, every day, you know, you imagine your first day in the office. You just say hi to someone that you don't know. And then gradually, gradually you're getting much more comfortable with this person because you're spending so much time with them. So that proximity over time allows for those connections to form. There is something about someone having a ring on their finger or something that makes them overtly unavailable that lowers the stakes of the entire interaction for the same reason, but on the inverse. If I say to someone, go and get that person's number, most people will freeze up. Why are they freezing up now? When. If I ask that person to go and get the time from someone, they'd be like, okay, why are they freezing up when they have to go over there and ask for their number? Because there's so much intention there, and the stakes feel really high. I could get rejected, but when someone is married, the stakes feel very low because I can't get rejected by someone who's not available in the first place. So now I start being more of myself. I start. Maybe I feel free to be goofy in a way that I wouldn't be goofy with someone that I actually thought was on the market. But the irony is that the goofiness ends up being more attractive, ends up creating more fun. Creating more moments allows for more flirtation. All of those things that most people censor when they're around someone that they really think is an option. And all of a sudden we become awkward and clumsy and a different version of ourselves. When we're in front of someone that we feel is safe because they're unavailable. There's no intention under the surface and there's no stakes. You can't reject me. You're already married. I bring a different version of myself now that allows for a couple of things to happen. Like I said, it allows for actually it allows for chemistry and connection, but it also allows for someone to see all of those sides of you and then to show you acceptance for those.

Things, which makes you feel seen.

Yeah. Because you're like, oh, look, I'm just exactly who I am with this person and they really accept me. They really get me. But of course, you're kind of engineering a scenario where this happens to a large extent because you don't give the average person out there who's single all of those sides of you to accept in the first place.

Yeah. And it's very easy for the married person to accept and see all of you because there's no stakes for them. They get to do that with zero expectation and pressure put on them. When. Which we'll go on to talk about more in detail later. But it's an important point with this, which is, you know, a normal person who's actually authentically getting to know you as a potential partner won't necessarily make you feel seen in that way because they're trying to work out whether or not they want to be with you. This person doesn't have to do that.

Yeah.

Because they've already got someone.

I think for so many people that. That I've worked with over the years who have ended up in situations like this, they ended up there by, you know, this accretion of interactions. For most people, it wasn't some massive moral failing on one particular day in one moment. It was this series of ways that things got pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed. And there are ways that he has aided that, which we'll talk about that I think, actually start to decon the structures that our morality is kind of. That hold our morality together. There are certain things that have been said by him that have allowed those structures to start to become more shaky.

Yeah.

And when that happens, your moral certainty about I mustn't do this or this is objectively wrong, or I would never do this. I would never have done this in the past. This is not part of my value system. Those things you start to question.

Well, you start to see them as a victim as well. Which is what's very interesting, what he said about being unhappy and the whole situation with his daughter and being afraid of this evil wife taking the daughter away. Like, what do we think about. You can probably tell from my voice what I think about it. But what do you think about this logic? I'm curious.

For me, I have to kind of steel man every argument which is to say that I have to have, like, a bulletproof logic for looking at it.

Which I think, which I really, by the way, appreciate, because when you and I speak about things, I can sometimes come from an emotional place. And you're much better. We would. We were prepping for this episode earlier, and I. I sort of went in like a ball in the china shop with my opinions. And you are very good at being more measured, even though your. Your. Your moral compass is very similar and is the same as mine. In fact, you're good at sort of, to your point, still manning your arguments so that there's no room for a kind of. What's the word? Like a. A disconnection or someone going, yeah, but if that's the case, then what about this? You're very, very good at that. So I think that's actually a very important voice in this. It's not so much about our opinions as it is about just generally these situations and what happens in these dynamics so that we can help people.

Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate that. I. Any. Any chink in the logic is going to be the same vulnerability that actually ends up derailing her.

Yes, that's so true.

So we kind of have to do it, even for her sake, because otherwise her brain will invent that anomaly and use it as justification to stay or to keep going. Look, he has said, you know, I'm not happy in my relationship. It's terrible. There's, you know, divorce papers have already been sent to me, and, you know, it's practically over. But I'm terrified that this person's gonna, you know, take my child away from.

Me, make it difficult to see his daughter.

Right. Whatever that means. But there's a kind of, in many ways, a heroic subtext to all of that, which is that, you know, it's just broken beyond repair. It's already hard. I've been served divorce papers so that, you know, I'm the victim here and love my child more than anything in the world. And, you know, I would do anything not to have my child taken away from me or made it hard for me to see my child. There's. There's a very heroic kind of subplot to that. I think it's just worth noting. But what I ask is, okay, is it true that, you know, some people might find themselves in a situation where they, you know, let's go to the extreme, have an extremely vicious partner who will try to destroy their life, who will move their child to another country? I am not saying that I believe this situation falls into that category. If I had to put, you know, life savings on it tomorrow, I would say it's not that don't bet our.

House just in case.

Right. But I would. My bet would be that he is trying to make himself look sympathetic, like a victim and like a hero all at the same time. And it gives him a perfect kind of pass to do what he's doing on the side. And by the way, he may even be convincing himself of some of this logic. You know, I think we sometimes forget that people, when they're doing things, that assuming this goes against his own moral compass, or at the very least, he wants to see himself as a good guy. I think people are actually quite good at convincing themselves of these kinds of arguments.

Yeah.

So he may have repeated them so many times to himself that he has started to believe some of these arguments.

And actually, as well, you know, people don't want to feel like a coward. They don't want to feel like a bad person, like a liar. So then they actually construct realities in their heads that help them live with themselves through their actions that mean that they don't have to identify as those things that they don't want to identify.

Well, there was an. There was a in. I think it's in how to win friends and influence people. One of the techniques that Dale Carnegie offers is that when you're trying to make friends, when you're, you know, when you're trying to connect with someone or influence people for that matter, when you look at their actions and you feed back their actions to them, especially if they've done something that you don't like, always give them the righteous motive, you know, say. Now I know that when you did that to your sister, though, I'm sure that it was coming from a place of you wanting to do what's right by your sister or you. It came from a place of love, you know, And I know that the result was that it hurt your. You know, so you're giving them the righteous motive because no one ever wants to think of themselves as a bad person. What you can rely on a lot of the time is people will often give themselves the righteous motive. And I believe that's what he's doing. But that's not convincing for Jenny because Jenny's in it and we're not. So she's actually the one who's got a front row seat to the things he's saying. She's also the one experiencing all of the love and connection and kindness and, you know, these feelings that she maybe hasn't felt in a very long time and is feeling very accepted and is seeing all of these wonderful sides of this human being. And so however, we may sit on the sidelines and objectively say, look, you know, Occam's razor. Occam's razor is a principle that, you know, the simplest explanation for something is usually the right one.

What's the simplest explanation here?

That he is having an affair. For whatever reason, he's not happy in his relationship, he's bored. He needs variety, Something's happened. He's selfish. He's. Well, selfish is kind of, in a sense, a prerequisite for acting that way in that moment. Right. The why is, you know, for any number of reasons. You know, he's freaking out because they've got a young child and his life has changed and he's like, what the hell? And he's rebelling against that. Like, who knows? There's multiple reasons he could be doing that. But I think the simplest explanation is that whatever reason he's. He's doing it, he has found a way to manipulate the perception of the person he's cheating with.

Yeah.

To look at him as this perfect.

Being and this victim.

And this victim.

When in reality the two victims are not him. They are Jenny and his wife.

Right. But Jenny is having a hard time believing that because she's in it. Right. And there are any number of people out there listening to this podcast right now that can point out objectively something in a friend's situation, but when they're in it, being fed the logic, it is much more difficult to see past the logic that someone is feeding you the reality that someone is constructing for you and to see the much, much simpler truth behind it. But let's just give Jenny that what he's saying is true. Even if what he's saying is true, it doesn't change the fact that he is someone who is therefore living in a fantasy where he's basically closing his eyes and covering his ears and going, I can't face the consequences of leaving this relationship. But the relationship also isn't tenable. So I'm going to have an affair. And I guess a hope that that never blows up in my face. Which shows not just a desire to live kind of in this fantasy world, but also a lack of like a real short term thinking. Doesn't, you know, if the consequences of his marriage breaking up are true, then he's not someone who shows great judgment because he's precipitating the very thing he's most afraid of and he's going to make it happen on a far worse scale from the way that he's going about it. Because instead of saying to his wife, I'm, I would like to leave, this marriage isn't working for me anymore, he's willing to risk that she finds out he's having an affair and all of the consequences that will come with that emotionally. B It's also a lack of regard for the. For Jenny who he's having the affair with. Because Jenny is a person in this. She's not just a kind of vessel for his enjoyment or his, you know, respite from the relationship. She's a person with feelings and with a future and with goals and a vision for what she wants in her life. So at some point Jenny is gonna not be satisfied with living in the present moment of just enjoying whatever it is, moment to moment. She's going to start wanting some kind of vision for the future. And it's the kind of willful ignorance of the fact that that day is coming where Jenny is gonna want that and ignoring the fact that all the while he's also taking away her time that she could be spending with someone else. So my, my point in all of this is to say that even if you give him that everything he's saying is true, which I think is very unlikely, Occam's Razor. The truth is probably far more simple. He's just wants affairs or isn't happy and is willing to lie to everyone involved, from Jenny to his wife, in order to get what he wants. But even if you give him that everything he's saying is true, that still makes him a bad partner. To me. It makes him someone who can't face up to reality, who can't do what's necessary to create change in his life, who is willing to do something incredibly reckless because of his fear that could actually blow up his life far worse, and is willing to make Jenny the collateral damage for his short term or medium term comfort as an escape from his relationship, not seeing her as an autonomous, independent person with her own life goals that need to factor into the equation. So I don't think he comes off very well as a partner. I think he comes off as a terrible choice of partner. Even if Jenny assumes everything he's saying is true.

Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more. So I'm curious. This actually is a good time to talk about what happens inside these dynamics because everything you just said is true. And Jenny says in her email that she has never felt. She says, but wow, he has loved me in a way that I have never been loved before. Now, I would argue that that's not how you treat people you love. Love isn't this.

But she says, he's treating me really well. So when you say love, this isn't how you treat people you love. How do you, what do you mean by that?

You don't treat people you love by wasting their time, by making them feel like they're not a priority. The truth is, if he has fallen in love with her, the right and decent thing to do is to go, I love you, I think you're the one for me. So I need to address my situation in order to do right by you. And then he needs to go to his wife, even if she is an awful human being who is all these things that I'm sure he's painted her out to be, or even if she is those things. He then goes to his wife and says, I can't be with you anymore because I'm no longer happy in this situation. And I'm willing to face up to the consequences of that because there's nothing more important to me than to go over here and be with the person that I love and treat that person really well. And ultimately, if he says, but in that equation, I love my daughter more, then you love your daughter more. But you don't then string along the person you say you love and waste their time and make them this collateral damage to your messy situation. If you really love someone, you let them go.

Yeah, because that's the other loving act is he could say to her, I.

Can'T give you what you, I love.

You, but I cannot, I'm not gonna leave my family. It's not gonna happen. So we shouldn't get any closer and.

We should end this a hundred percent. And that to me would be him loving her like she has never been loved, not him doing this very easy thing to do like we talked about earlier, which, which is what happens inside these dynamics. Right? It's. I knew someone in my life, someone close to me. This is a, a long time ago, this is a few years ago, who was. She got caught in exactly this situation with someone who I absolutely to my core believe was a narcissist. He was just, his personality was just one of those anti social personalities. It was not appropriate. She hasn't said any of that here. So I don't want to tard this person as a narcissist. But the commonality which I think is important to say is, you know, there is a Kind of, there's a couple of things, but there is a, a love bombing element that happens where you get to show up. If you're him, you get to show up as the perfect partner to her. You get to take romantic trips, send the loveliest messages, gifts, everything, all the things, be there, laugh, show up for them. Because you get to do it in this very contained, very safe environment that doesn't actually ask anything of you, right? So you get to do that and you get to be like the best guy in that situation. Now if you're Jenny or my friend on a receiving end of that, you go, I've never felt this way about anyone before. Because you probably haven't because no one's ever made you feel like that. Because no one has ever had that self contained space to be able to make you feel like that and then go home to their wife.

He is almost certainly reserving the best parts of himself for Jenny. And no doubt his wife sees the worst parts of him. And that's a very. That creates an extraordinarily skewed perception because you're never having a real relationship with someone. Jenny has no idea what a real relationship with this man looks like because she's living in a constant, perpetual, actual.

Honeymoon, which she gets to see the side of him that he wants to project out to her, which is, I'm a great guy. You know, one of the things she might say to us, you know, if she were with us listening, she might say, but he's such a good person. This is what my friend used to say, but he's such a good person. And I was like, but he's not a good person because he's a married man with kids, wasting your time and lying and cheating on his wife. That does not. To me, that is not how I define a good person. It just isn't. What is nice to you, he's good to you, he's kind to you, he listens to you, he makes effort for you. Great. That doesn't make him a good person. It really doesn't. And I think that what happens in these dynamics, and I'm so curious, I know you have so many interesting things to say. But just to wrap up this point, what happens in these dynamics is they become very, very hard to get over these people because you never quite have them. So you're always feeling unconsciously like a second choice, like you're never quite there, quite able to hold on to them. You don't get to take them to your friends weddings as your plus one. You don't get to do those things with them because they exist. And you have your own parallel world that you have both created that runs alongside both of your real lives. And that creates the perfect place for somebody to just basically manipulate and brainwash you into thinking they are everything that they want you to think that they are. And then it becomes really difficult to extrapolate yourself from those situations. And that's one of the things that happens in these dynamics. And I, I actually want to commend you, Jenny, if you're listening, because even the fact that you said you're now taking action in no longer hanging out with him one on one because you're afraid of, you know, falling deeper for him, that's really, really hard to do. And I think so many people can't do that. We speak to people who 10 years later are still stuck in those dynamics and still they're not able to. To do that. They're not able to say no to them. So I just want to recognize that as a, as a really quite amazing thing to do because when you're in that dynamic, it's very, very, very hard to basically be disciplined enough with yourself to say, even though this is what I want the most in the world, I'm not going to do it. It's hard to do.

Yeah.

When you've fallen in love with someone.

And I like the fact that, you know, Jenny is asking the kinds of questions she's asking, which are, you know, should I be giving an ultimatum, by the way? If you do, I will re bet our house.

Don't bet our house.

Okay. I'll rebate a significant amount of money on the fact that that ultimatum is one you lose. The moment you give an ultimatum, you'll find out exactly what this is. And by the way, let me put this to you as an idea. Let's say the ultimatum finally made him say, fine, I will leave my marriage and be with you. That would be the right thing. But it's the right thing done under duress. This is a bit different from, you know, an ultimatum from, you know, when you give someone an ultimatum who is simply kind of casually seeing you but, you know, wants to keep seeing you but won't commit. You know, if you give an ultimatum in that situation, you can argue that committing to you. It's not that committing to you is the right thing. Right. It's not a question of right or wrong. It's just a question of don't waste my time. So if you want to be with me, you have to Commit. And if you don't want to be with me, so be it. You're kind of doing something that helps them or may raise the stakes for them to make up their mind. But what they're making up their mind about isn't necessarily a question of right and wrong in this situation. Him suddenly doing the right thing because you gave him an ultimatum is him doing the right thing under duress.

Yeah.

And that's worth paying attention to, because the mark of character is not what someone does when they're forced to, is what do they do when they have power. And right now, he has power.

I forgot you've said that before, and I. I can't remember when it was, and I'd forgotten that, and it just really hit me. You're so right. I think it's worth highlighting what you just said. The mark of someone's character is what they do when they have power. That's so true.

And right now, by the way, he's showing you what he does when he.

Has power, which is everything he wants.

He. The power he has, by the way, is that he has a wife and child who don't know about you. He has nothing but a glowing image in your eyes, and he can, at least for now, it seems, do what he wants. That's the. That's the position of power he's in. You giving him an ultimatum takes away that power. So even if he, by the way, give him that ultimatum, I can almost guarantee you that spells the end of your relationship with him. Almost guarantee you. But. But even if it came you. Even if it went your way, that was doing the right thing once you stripped him of that power. So it has a lot less value, especially as a mark of his character. But the. The thing that I think is really important to pay attention to in all of this, two things. You. Audrey, made a point that's really important, which is that, you know, while all cheating, we can say, is bad and destructive and creates real trauma for the people that get cheated on on a spectrum, there is something different that is required of someone who keeps an affair going versus someone who cheats in a moment of, you know, selfishness, lapse of judgment, poor character in that moment, whatever.

It may be, even if that. That, you know, cheating situation occurs in, like, a pocket of time that's, you know, it doesn't have to be just once. Right? You can. You can have. You can fall for someone or think you're falling for someone, have a sort of very brief affair for a month or two or a month and you know, like a short time and then say, what am I doing? I can't do this.

And it's the, is the absence of the what am I doing? Moment that requires an extra ingredient.

Yes.

And, and that extra ingredient is a lack of empathy. I, I am no longer, if I ever had it, exercising empathy for the people in this situation. Not for Jenny, not for my wife and child at home. And the way I'm deceiving them, you know, it is a true lack of empathy. And what really for me sets off alarm bells in situations like this is that the lack of empathy required to continue a situation like this and not, it's not, he's not going, I'm so you're Jenny emailing us saying, I'm so ashamed. He's not saying, I'm so ashamed.

He's saying, can I still see you?

He's to trying, still trying to meet up.

Yeah.

And progress this. You're the one saying, I don't think I can because I, this isn't right for me and it's not appropriate and I feel shame and all of this. You're afraid to email us because of how this is making you feel.

Yeah. Right, right.

He's not coming to you saying, I don't know if I can see you again. I feel sick to my stuff. I love you. Oh, my God. I, I, I have never felt something like this before, but I feel sick to my stomach every day that I'm living this double life and it's making me crazy. Even, even if he didn't feel sick to his stomach at what he was doing to his wife because he was like, she's the, she is just a she devil. I am not sorry for what I'm doing to her. Even if that was true, there's nothing that, that gets to him about living a double life that doesn't mess with his head, you know?

So true.

There's something off about that that should, that messes with a person. Living a double life makes most people feel wildly uncomfortable and also wildly anxious, if that's what I mean.

If what you're actually deep down afraid of is that your daughter's going to be, you know, not taken away from you, but you know, your wife is going to make it difficult. If that's really what you're afraid of, then aren't you afraid that your wife is going to find out and be 10 times more pissed off because you're having this affair?

What really sets off alarm bells for me is that combined with the utter lack of Accountability in the story. The story he's presented isn't a very balanced one. I mean, it really is like a. If I needed to write a story that made me look as good as possible and my wife looked bad, that's the story I write. There's no nuance. It's a very caricatured story. Most of us can look at a relationship and go, yeah, you know, my wife's done bad things or my. This person. But, you know, I also did this and, you know, I probably shouldn't have got into it in the first place. And I, you know, like you, there's a. There's a complexity to it. And the story being told here, to me is so devoid of any ownership.

Yeah.

That the thing that the, you know, a lot of people know, especially our love life members. I talk a lot about unique pairings and how unique pairings are different qualities that make you uniquely attractive. Well, there are also combinations of qualities. I talk about this in the book Love Life. There are combinations of qualities that are both bad that when combined, are uniquely dangerous. So these are like dark pairings. Unique pairings are combinations of qualities that make you uniquely attractive. Dark pairings are combinations of qualities that make you uniquely dangerous or a person uniquely dangerous. And I find the lack of empathy combined with the lack of accountability and ownership a dark pairing.

That's so true.

That makes him uniquely dangerous for you emotionally. Because, by the way, let's. Let's be clear about something. When the time comes that he has to let go of you, he will show no more ownership in that situation, as he's showing right now in his current situation. Yeah, the lack of accountability now in the way he tells his story will reflect the lack of accountability that he's going to show when he tells the story of you.

So two things. First of all, people, what they do is they say, my wife is the worst. We are not happy. We don't sleep in the same bed. She served me divorce papers. I'm afraid she's going to take all my money or my children, whatever. All of which, by the way, is impossible to corroborate because what are you going to do? Reach out to the wife and say, hey, your husband, who I'm dating, is saying all this. Is it true? Are you guys really not sleeping in the same bed? Who on earth can corroborate that?

So never forget, he controls the press.

He controls the press.

He controls the press. She doesn't have a voice. She does not have a microphone, so she can't talk about Any of this.

So it could be true, but it could be a whole load of shit. And that's really important. The first thing is important because what that happens then is that you then have this picture of this man who is faithful to you. He's unfaithful to his wife and faithful to you. But what ends up happening, a lot of the time, that very same person will be unfaithful to you because they're not unfaithful to their wife and unfaithful to you. They're just unfaithful. And in the person I was speaking about earlier, what ended up happening is she wasted. I think it was three years or so of her life with this person, and he ended up cheating on her. And she was like, he cheated on me. I can't believe he cheated on me. But of course he cheated on you because he's a cheater. He's a chronic compulsive cheat because he's doing it to his wife. If he can do it with her, he can do it with you. He could. Sorry. If he can do it with you, he can do it to you. And I think the fact, the combination of them controlling the press and the fact that you have no control over the decision ultimately, because it's their life that they have to change, means that you end up just going along. There's a such a power imbalance in these moments, and you end up going along with what they say, which is, my wife is awful and I'm all about you. But that's just a story that you're hearing from one person with no ability to corroborate it anywhere. And that's very important.

And this idea that they will be faithful to you when they weren't to someone else, this idea of, you know, all of their stories are true, and all of this idea of it's going to come good in the end. While you're making all of those assumptions, it is your real time that is disappearing. These are all stories. What's real is the time you're losing. Yeah, that is irrefutable. You can make all of these wild assumptions about, you know, the possibility that he's telling the truth, that he's going to suddenly change his nature when he's with you, that he's going to, at some point in the next few years, decide to leave his family, which is something he's shown no signs of doing so far, and be with you. You can make all of those what I think of as outlandish assumptions, but you don't get your time back at the end of that experiment. So you may as well assume that the most likely explanations, the ones that we're sharing in this episode, are the truth. Because at the end of that, you still have all of your time to play for.

It's so true.

And by the way, if what's going to happen, like, let's just run that experiment. Because the argue the flip side to that is, yeah, but I don't get another him, right? Well, a year from now, if he knocked on your door and said, I left, I left. I couldn't be. I couldn't live without you. I ended it. And I'm seeing my kid every other weekend or I'm seeing, you know, whatever. You know, that's part of my life now. But I want to be with you. What are you gonna do? You're probably gonna say, okay, let's do it. So did you really lose him the option of having him? Of course you didn't. You only lost the option of having him if his decision stays the same as it is today, which that's true, right? That's kind of funny. Like, the decision that's making you unhappy today, which is he's remaining with his wife, is the one he has the power to change. You only lose him if he remains unwilling to change that decision. Meanwhile, you get all of your time back if he never changes that decision.

And also, when you tell the story of you, if you end up, you know, miraculously together with this man, do you want that story to be, I was seeing him for years and years and years, and eventually, after I coerced him into it, he left his wife.

After 10 years of suffering and having to live a double life myself.

Or do you want to be able to stand in integrity and say, we fell in love, we made a mistake, we parted ways because we recognized that was wrong. And. And then he separated, and when we were both single, we got back together.

Yeah.

That's a much nicer story to tell at the dinner table when people ask you, how did you see me? Because it's a bit awkward to be like, well.

Or he showed the maturity to go, I'm going to go and take the next year to wrap up this, because it's going to take me a minute, it's going to be messy, and it's going to be a whole thing, and I can't ask you to wait for me, but I am going to go and do that, and I hope you're there when I'm done, because I want to you know, like even that would show a different level of maturity that I'm going to handle reality.

And it would allow you to trust him. Yeah, because trust will always be an issue for as long as these are the circumstances in which you, in which you guys got together. I think for me anyway, it would be a, it would be a, it would be an issue. That sort of doesn't feel like an issue right now because you haven't got him, Jenny. So you haven't quite been able to live out what a day to day life would be. But I think it would become an issue and trust would become an issue because how can you ever trust that they wouldn't do the same thing to you when you turned out to be awful and boring and somehow not meeting their needs? Which is ultimately what happens a lot of the time is the wife stop meetings and stops meeting the needs and then they get demonized and tarnishes the, the she devil.

Yeah. I want to just make one more point before we wrap this up. There is a final line in this email where she says, am I crazy to feel that he married the wrong person? And my response to that is that Jenny, your opinion doesn't matter.

What do you mean?

This thought you have that is going to drive you crazy. Like right now that thought is driving her crazy. But I can see he's unhappy and he's happier with me and he married the wrong person. Like what do I do with that thought? And I'll say it again, your opinion on that doesn't matter. It is absolutely irrelevant. Nothing could matter less than your opinion on that because it's his opinion on that that matters. If he decides I married the wrong person and I, by the way, that's only one realization. And then furthermore has the realization that and therefore I'm going to get out of it and does then that that opinion he has becomes very relevant to your life if he chooses you once he's out of his marriage. Also no guarantee. But then all of a sudden him thinking that matters, you thinking he married the wrong person is a completely irrelevant thought. It does not matter one jot what you think about whether someone is with the wrong person. The only thing that matters is what they think about that. And it's really important because otherwise we all walk around going, if only they could realize that they married the wrong person. If only that he could realize he has the wrong girlfriend. If only she could realize she's with the wrong guy, we'd be so happy together. Life doesn't care about your opinion on that. The only thing that matters in real life is their opinion on that and what they decide to do about that opinion.

Oof. Damn.

That's all I wanted to say. So that. I know that sounds harsh, but it's so true. And once you realize that, you will stop wasting calories worrying about what. Who someone should be with and what they should do in their situation.

Yeah.

As it relates to you.

So having said all of that, I want to know what your advice to Jenny is on what she should do about the situation. Because that's what she emailed in. She said, what should I do?

Well, this is the. This is the really quick part of the answer. Everything we've done that has, I don't know, taken us the better part of an hour in this podcast. That's the hard part, is untangling all of the logic and the story and getting to the simple truth of this, which is that he's either bullshitting you or he's telling the truth and still doesn't have the ability to actually go and end his relationship.

Either way, he's not choosing you.

Either way, he's not choosing you. And you're choosing a life of suffering and betting your real time while you do it, which you can never get back. So getting to that point is the hard part. And I hope Jenny is listening, because I think this could be one of the most valuable hours of her life. The easy part or this? Not the easy part, but the simple and quick answer is that now you have all of that information. There really is only one option, and that's to end it and to end it now and to not look back.

To let them go.

And the only time you ever look back is if something very substantial changes in that person's situation. And by the way, that will be the truest test of whether any of the things they said about how much they love you and how much they've committed to whatever, you know, their relationship with you, that would be the truest test of whether any of that was true.

Yeah.

But your job now is to tell this person, this is out of alignment with my values. It's been out of alignment with my values since day one. It has eaten away at me. It's made me feel a lot of shame. I have to take the feelings that I have for you and get over them because your life is showing no signs of changing. And I'm not here to comment on what you should do in your life. What I know is that unless you are no longer in your current relationship, this relationship between you and I has absolutely no place in my life.

Yeah.

And since your relationship shows no signs of changing, and that's, you know, you say you have your reasons for that, and that's fine. I'm not here to question those. But. But the fact is, it shows no signs of changing, and therefore I have to leave or. And therefore I have no interest in any further romantic involvement with you, you know, we can continue to work together as professionals, but I won't be seeing you outside of work. I'm not going to be having any kind of an inappropriate exchange with you at work. You know, I just. Let's be cordial. Let's be professional.

And you leave your job if you.

Have to, and you leave your job if you have to, which is a. Which is a real possibility.

Which sucks, by the way, but maybe the only way that you create some actual distance between the two of you which allows you to move on from this, unfortunately. I know we took a little bit longer today on this episode, but I think it was really powerful and really valuable because a lot of people do end up in these situations. And, Jenny, we just want to say thank you so much for your vulnerability and openness in reaching out. And we hope that this was helpful and helpful to anyone else who may not have had the courage to reach out, but had the same question.

Yeah. And. And, you know, this shame that you feel is evidence of the fact that you really do have a moral compass and that, you know, people do. People do stray from their moral compass. We all do in different ways in our lives. People do. But that doesn't make you fundamentally a bad person. And the fact that you've reached out is beautiful. You know, the fact that you shared it, I think things become lighter the moment you share them. And you were brave enough to do that. And it's because what you want is to be in alignment with your true character and your true nature. So you should be proud of yourself for reaching out so vulnerably.

Yeah.

What I want you to do is go make yourself proud with the next move, too. Email us. Let me know what you thought of this episode podcast@Matthew Hussey.com what did it mean to you? What did it make you realize? It would mean the world to us if you are connected with how much you're enjoying this podcast right now. For you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Can you leave reviews on Spotify? I imagine you can. But wherever you listen to your podcasts, leave us a review because it really does help spread the word about the podcast and it means a great deal to us. And we spoke a little bit about some of the content in the book today. If you haven't got a copy, lovelifebook.com is the link for you to go and grab a copy of the brand new book Love Life how to raise your standards, find your person and live happily no matter what. Thank you so much for listening everyone. It's been a pleasure to be with you today. Thank you Audrey for amazing insight today.

Thank you.

Be well everyone and Love Life.